


Shadow Puppets and Writers' Panel

by yourlibrarian



Series: Convention Write Ups [6]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Conventions, Gen, Nonfiction, Transcribed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29871696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: Panels at the James Marsters Con at the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
Series: Convention Write Ups [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2196066
Kudos: 1
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Shadow Puppets and Writers' Panel

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted September 14, 2006

Tony Todd and Michael Winnick discussed "Shadow Puppets." I only took a few notes on that as my hand was pretty tired but there were a fair number of questions and some interesting answers. 

The first question was to Tony Todd and asked him what he did as an actor to play to green screens and effects that are absent. He said that there was a visual effects guy on the set with a laptop "and if you were smart you'd go talk to him" to get an idea of what an effect would look like. I was intrigued to hear this as I'd never realized any effects rep was present on a set. But maybe with movies so ridden with them these days that actually happens a lot? 

Both agreed that the set where most of this was filmed, an abandoned mental hospital, was a creepy place and odd things kept happening. There were injuries and unexplainable things such as battery operated equipment that was supposed to be usable for a full 8 hours only lasting 15 minutes. The script continuity person fell down some stairs or something and injured herself and Tony was called to come carry her to safety "They needed a helicopter and had me." 

Discussion about how Winnick was always stuck on the set while Tony was taken out to see Lakers and hockey games by members of Winnick's family or the producer. Tony kept ribbing Winnick about not having been his first choice for the role, though Winnick said he was but that he had been asked to come up with more choices.

Winnick said that the film was structured so that the story is like a tour of the different sections of the human brain, with the sections of the story taking the characters into new areas. 

Asked what were the scariest films they'd ever seen Winnick said "Seven." Tony Todd said "Farenheit 9/11."

There is apparently only one enclosed pool in L.A. that can be used for filming, all others have windows or light of some kind. They never expected such a location to be so hard to get.

Because all the characters in the film begin the story having no memory of who they are, it presented an interesting challenge for actors "James talked about this a lot." Is a person their memories or is there some core personality that still exists separate from all that? How do you shape a person who doesn't know who they are? I hadn't thought about that before but I gather that the film deals with that to some degree.

**Writer's Panel**

This was fun to see and hear. I don't know how often they get to see one another but they seemed to enjoy the chance to interact here and that was fun to watch -- and also get answers to questions, especially when they disagreed! Jane Espenson (JE), Steve DeKnight (SDK) and David Fury (DF).

First up was "What do you think the Spike/Darla relationship was and what would you write for them?"   
JE: I didn't write Darla.  
SDK: I think it would be pretty hot, don't you?  
DF: I can't imagine Spike being into Darla.  
JE: Darla wouldn't put up with Spike straying (don't know if she meant Dru, but that's what the notes say)  
DF: After Dru he fixated on Buffy, I don't think he was that interested in other people  
JE: If the timing had worked out they could have been good together.  
The questioner asked if they all concluded that Darla just didn't like Spike very much but they didn't think that was necessarily the case. They all seemed to agree that Spike was too wrapped up in Dru to really go after Darla. Interestingly no one really talked about the Angel/Darla issue and whether or not they would take other lovers from time to time. Maybe they thought that was more plausible and so didn't mention it?

Asked about the monster metaphor, JE said it was really all about the character. SDK: Monsters were not just monsters.

After writing for a while in a series do they start to tailor things to what the actors can do?   
JE: I tailor lines for what an actor can do.  
DF: I don't write what they _can't_ do. One character couldn't run. We had to get someone else to run for her.  
SDK: She couldn't laugh either.  
DF: We'd watch the dailies and just laugh. So we'd write her running and laughing.

What flashback episode would they like to write? They dithered a while on this one but then Giles was suggested and JE said they already had done a bit of him in "Band Candy."  
DF: Who wrote that?  
JE: (grinning modestly) I did.  
DF: (mild sarcasm) Oh yeah. That was great. (He did this several times during the Q&A, as one JE episode after another was referenced, cracking everyone up. Especially Jane).  
JE then agreed that Giles would be really good though because then you could do a teenage Ethan, which she would really love to do. 

How has writing changed them as people?   
SDK: I'm a real SOB now.  
DF: You used to be taller.  
JE: Writing didn't really change her, re: the Joss shows "That job felt like writing fanfic all the time."

Is there a comic book character they would like to write?  
DF: (Not missing a beat) Little Dot.   
SDK: Really liked the Punisher, but didn't like how he had been done in the movie. Made some jokes about how if he got to do it the Punisher would be (something, sadly don't remember this but it was very funny).  
JE: Wonder Woman.   
DF: Started talking about "Powers"(?) and "Y: The Last Man". They all agreed this was a great story.   
JE: Thinks that everything would be better as a TV series though than a film. DF returned to talking about Little Dot.

My question was next, I told them it was about terminology and vampire lineage. I wanted to know if "sire" is the term used to turn a human, what is the converse term for the person sired? This stumped them and I explained the question again but SDK said they understood the question they just didn't know the answer.  
DF: The siree.  
The audience shouted out "childe." They disagreed though that this would be the term, JE said Joss "wouldn't go for fairie spellings."   
I then mentioned that the only reference in the 8 years of the series I could find was when Andrew used the term "spawn" in "Storyteller." Before I could add that Andrew was an unreliable narrator DF said  
DF: Who wrote "Storyteller"?  
JE: (Laughing) Oh, I did.  
DF: That's right. Yeah, that was great.  
JE went on to say that Andrew would have brought his own terminology but that "I don't think that's canon." They all agreed that there had been no real discussion about it in the writer's room and a term had never been chosen.

I think the next question was either about research done for the show or "Why We Fight" on AtS S5. SDK said that Joss had come in with the idea at the last minute, Spike and Angel should be on a submarine in WWII. The writers were like "Oh, ok." He said he ran out and rented "U-571" and that was all the research there was. In fact you can watch the episode and see he took all the tech talk straight from the movie. 

I think the next one was about how the metaphor plan evolved. They agreed there was a shift in the show from strict metaphor to bigger issues but that metaphors continued to be used.

Asked about writing for TV or features SDK noted that on TV writers get to torture other people, like directors, whereas the reverse is true on features.

Asked about the increased nudity of Spike and whether it got to be too much:  
JE: I think Marti had more and more influence on the show. We all liked naked Spike.

Asked about fan response online DF said he was a New Yorker and "I love a good barfight." He has fun with debates, and would often show sites to other writers going, "They're so angry with me!" He felt that coming from comedy one should offend as many people as possible because then you knew you were getting to something. So he would find some avenue even working on a drama.   
SDK: You'd do the same thing in the writer's room.  
DF: He'd fought with Petrie over Shirley Hemple from "What's Happening" but recognized a kindred spirit in Steve because he was an instigator. Witnessing an argument like that he'd say "Are you going to take that from him?" He decided they needed Steve over on AtS.

Asked about researching Wicca, no one had done so, though Joss would reference it from time to time. Once something was established you would continue with it, like improv. JE said she probably spent 5 minutes online looking something up, finding something usable and putting it in the script.

Asked about difficulties with writing, DF said that all the guys would compete about how much their writing sucked. "Then Jane would come in saying, 'Look at this lovely thing I've written'!" JE said that one of the ways she would push through writer blocks was with self-praise.

They were then asked if they'd talked to Joss about Wonder Woman but Jane said she knew Joss was asked about it so much she wanted to stay away from it and wouldn't ask him. I think they then talked about the casting issue and how you needed to have someone that wasn't a teenage girl, she didn't have to become a superhero, she already was one. She was an Amazon, they needed someone who could be an Amazon and could act. DF said James should be Wonder Woman. James must have been on the above floors because DF yelled up that he was just saying he should play Wonder Woman. JE mentioned Gina Torres. SDK then talked about the invisible plane and what was up with that. If the plane was invisible, couldn't you see her? What was the point? There was then some discussion about didn't Storm also have an invisible plane? DF then said that in the current mythos WW could fly, so why would she need a plane? Someone from the audience shouted out "Luggage!" 

Asked where they would live if money were no object JE instantly answered Sydney. She thought it was a place that seemed easy to live in. DF said the same, he had loved it when visiting it for a con he was booked at, his kids loved it. Then he told a funny story about how when he was a kid his mother had read in the paper that Australia had a teacher shortage. So his parents told him that they were moving to Australia for his mother to work there. He started packing for the move, thinking about what life would be like there, what he'd need and then his parents told him they were just joking.   
SDK: Came from a hick NJ town and always wanted to live in L.A. He would like a mansion, but otherwise he was where he wanted to be. JE said she too had always wanted to live in L.A.

Asked about the racist overtones of "humans are good due to their souls even when they're bad", but demons are never good even when they act better than the humans. They rather avoided the thrust of the question here, and started focusing on the soul issue. DF said that the soul meant that a person had the capability of being good whereas an unsouled creature did not, but it didn't mean you would be. Then talking about the demons on AtS he and Steve thought that demons could have souls, but it had been established early on that vamps didn't. Joss had shifted away from the whole good/evil issue to a world where both were needed but had to be balanced. They speculated on what that meant for the role of the Slayer and decided she was needed to keep things in balance, so that the evil wouldn't overwhelm the good. JE actually moved back to the racism discussion saying this was something that had always bothered her about the treatment of the Ferengi on Trek. Supposedly the Federation and the human philosophy was that they were accepting of all species but the Ferengi were never treated that way, and were always looked down upon. DF: "That's because they killed Jesus."


End file.
